Sequels are generally produced with immediacy in order to take advantage of an original's popularity, but there are distinct advantages in waiting for time to pass. With an extended gap between chapters in a film franchise, there is not only the chance offered for audiences to miss the characters and pine for a reunion, but there is chance for said characters to take on new perspectives. The upcoming Freakier Friday is a perfect example of this, set to arrive more than two decades after its predecessor, and the passing time has allowed star Lindsay Lohan to gain a new point of view: motherhood.
Entertainment Weekly recently spoke with Lindsay Lohan and Oscar-winning co-star Jamie Lee Curtis about their work reuniting for the upcoming Disney movie, and one major thing that has changed for the former in the years since the 2003 release of Freaky Friday is that she has become a mom (she gave birth to a son with her husband Bader Shammas in 2023). In Freakier Friday, Anna is a parent to a daughter named Harper (Julia Butters), and Lohan used her emotional experience over the last couple years to inform her performance:
The closeness that you have with your child, and that bond — how irreplaceable that is, and wanting to do the right thing for your child — is always the most important thing in the world, and nothing can stand in the way of that.
Set with a summer release date on the 2025 movie schedule, Freakier Friday will see the Coleman family getting closer than most. Anna (Lohan) ends up in Harper's body, and Harper ends up in Anna's body. Concurrently, Anna's soon-to-be stepdaughter Lily (Sophia Hammons) ends up doing a swap with Tess (Jamie Lee Curtis), her soon-to-be grandmother.
Lindsay Lohan says that motherhood gave her the ability to attain a certain emotion to which she didn't previously have access: that intense mom calm. She added,
I also didn't have the calmness that a mother needs to have when a child is losing it. Now, I get to play with that. I get to have those moments that Tess used to have with Anna.
It should make for a very different story than audiences got to see the first time around – and it will be interesting to see the generational reaction to it. There are millennials who grew up loving 2003's Freaky Friday who, like Lindsay Lohan, are parents now, and Freakier Friday will be a movie they can hopefully share with their Gen Z/Gen Alpha children.
Fans have been waiting for the sequel for more than 20 years, but the film went into production last year with a cast that includes Manny Jacinto, Mark Harmon, Stephen Tobolowsky, Vanessa Bayer and Chad Michael Murray (reprising his role as Jake from Freaky Friday), and Freakier Friday is now scheduled to arrive in theaters on August 8.
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